The American Statistical Association’s Datafest, a nationally coordinated data analysis competition that brings together the data science community, was held at Oregon State University April 15-17, 2016. Nine teams comprising 37 students and faculty from OSU, University of Oregon and Reed College matched up in data competitions and learned more about data science and statistics than you might think is humanly possible in one weekend.

The competitions kicked off at 7:30 pm Friday, April 15 in Weniger Hall and continued through Sunday, April 17 at 4 pm. Students came prepared with laptops locked and loaded with data analysis software and tools.

DataFest Oregon is a celebration of data in which teams of undergraduates work around the clock to find and share meaning in a large, rich, and complex data set. It’s a good way to meet other students interested in data.

Undergraduate and graduate students did the work, working under pressure as part of a team and examined their own critical thinking processes, with assistance from a cadre of roving consultants, including graduate students, faculty, and industry professionals.

After two days of intense data wrangling, analysis, and presentation design, each team developed a mere two presentation slides in just a few minutes in hopes of impressing the panel of judges.

Did we mention the prizes? Prizes, fame and glory (and cool T-shirts) went to the following students who were awarded Best Insight, Best Use of External Data, and Best Visualization. Winners received medals, a book bundle, and a one-year membership to the American Statistical Association.

Best Visualization

Minions of Statistics

Xiaoxi Gu

Oregon State University

Statistics

Minions of Statistics

Mei Meng

Oregon State University

Statistics

Minions of Statistics

Arpita Mukherjee

Oregon State University

Statistics

Minions of Statistics

Mai Nguyen

Oregon State University

Statistics

Minions of Statistics

Yiran (Rain) Wang

Oregon State University

Statistics

Best use of external data

Very Big Team

Bret Lorimore

Oregon State University

Computer Science

Very Big Team

Chris Vlessis

Oregon State University

Computer Science

Very Big Team

George Harder

Oregon State University

Computer Science

Best insight

Pretty Terrestrial

Andrew Brereton

Oregon State University

Biochemistry and Biophysics

Pretty Terrestrial

Michelle Wiley

Oregon State University

Biochemistry and Biophysics

Pretty Terrestrial

Steven Friedman

Oregon State University

Biochemistry and Biophysics

Pretty Terrestrial

Camden Lopez

Oregon State University

Statistics

Charlotte Wickham, Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at OSU, was instrumental in bringing ASA DataFest to campus for the first time, championing the student competitions, and leading planning and organizing efforts.

DataFest Oregon was sponsored by the College of Science, Department of Statistics, the American Statistical Association, Google and DataCamp and Oregon State University.